"Get around behind 'em, Wade!" Bodean yelled.

"You get around behind 'em, dumb a.s.s!"

Bodean, proving the cunning of a poker player did not translate into common sense, stood up and sprinted for the building's corner. He got about three strides when a single gunshot rang out and he grabbed at his right foot and fell sprawling to the pavement. "I'm shot, Daddy! Daddy, I'm shot!" he whined, his pistol lying out of reach.

"Didn't think you were f.u.c.kin' tickled!" Biggun roared back. "Lord G.o.d, you got the brains of a BB in a boxcar!"

"Gimme somethin' else to shoot at!" the Candystick Kid urged, well-hidden in the shadow of the tow truck. "I got a gun full of lonely bullets!"

"Give it up, Biggun!" Sheriff Amory said. "You're washed up around here!"

"If I am, I'll make you choke on the soap, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

"Ain't no use anybody else gettin' hurt! Throw out your guns and let's call it quits!"

"Sheeeeyit!" Biggun snarled. "You think I got anywhere in this life by callin' it quits? You think I come up from hog t.u.r.ds and cotton fields to let a little tin star take my boy away from me and ruin everythin'? You shoulda used that money I been payin' you to buy a head doctor with!"

"Biggun, it's over! You're surrounded!" That was my father's voice. To my dying day I shall never forget the steel in it. He was a Blackhawk, after all.

"Surround this!" Wade jumped up and started firing with his rifle in my father's direction. Biggun hollered for him to get down, but Wade was balanced on the lunatic edge just like Donny. Bullets struck sparks off the concrete, and one of them thunked into a tire in my nest of concealment. My heart seized up, it was so close. Then the Candystick Kid's gun cracked again, just once, and a chunk of Wade's left ear spun off his head and red blood spattered the Cadillac's hood.

You would've thought the bullet had chopped off something more central, because Wade screamed like a woman. He clutched at his ragged ear, fell to the ground, and started wheeling around and around like the Three Stooges' Curly having a caterwauling fit.

"Oh, my soul!" Biggun moaned.

It was obvious that, like the Branlins, the Blaylocks could dish it out but they sure couldn't take it.

"d.a.m.n, I missed!" the Candystick Kid said. "I was aimin' for his head instead of his a.s.s!"

"I'll kill ya!" Biggun's voice returned to the thunder zone. " I'll kill every one of ya and dance on your graves!"

It was a frightening sound. But with Bodean and Wade writhing on the pavement and Donny yelping like a sad little puppy, there wasn't much lightning left in the storm.

And then the pickup's pa.s.senger-side door opened and the Moon Man stepped out. He was wearing a black suit and a red bow tie, as well as his top hat. Around his neck were six or seven strings and attached to the strings were small things that looked like tea bags. A chicken foot was pinned to one lapel, and he wore three watches on each wrist. He didn't duck or dodge. Instead, he began walking past the sheriff's car, past Fire Chief Marchette and my dad and Sheriff Amory. "Hey!" Chief Marchette shouted. "Get your head down!"

But the Moon Man kept going with a deliberate stride, his head held high. He was going right to where Biggun Blaylock crouched by the Cadillac holding a loaded double-barreled shotgun.

"Cease this violence!" the Moon Man intoned in a soft, almost childlike voice. I had never heard him speak before. "Cease this violence, for the sake of all that's good!" His long legs stepped over Wade without hesitation.

"Keep away from me, you nutty n.i.g.g.e.r!" Biggun warned. But the Moon Man would not be halted. Dad shouted, "Come back!" and started to get up, but Sheriff Amory's hand closed on his forearm.

"I'll blow you to voodoo blazes!" Biggun said, indicating that he indeed knew the reputations of the Moon Man and the Lady. Biggun's eyes had taken on the wet glint of fear. "Stay away from me! Stay away, I said!"

The Moon Man stopped in front of Biggun. The Moon Man smiled, his eyes crinkling up, and he held out his long, slim arms. "Let us search for light," he said.

Biggun aimed the shotgun at the Moon Man at point-blank range. He sneered, "Well, light one for me!" and his thick finger wrenched both triggers at once.

I flinched, my eardrums already cracking from the blast.

But there was no blast.

"Stand up and walk like a man," the Moon Man said, still smiling. "It's not too late."

Biggun gagged and gasped at the same time. He wrenched the triggers again. Still, no blast. Biggun snapped the shotgun open, and what was jammed into the chambers came spilling out over his hands.

They were little green garden snakes. Dozens of them, all tangled together. Perfectly harmless, but they did some damage to Biggun Blaylock, and that's no lie.

"Gaaaaakkkk!" he choked. He knocked the snakes out of the chambers, reached into his ammo bag, and his hand came out full of rippling green bodies. Biggun made a noise like Lou Costello coming face-to-face with Lon Chaney Junior's werewolf-" Wo wo wo wo wo!"-and suddenly that monstrous bulk was up on its feet and showed that he might not walk like a man but he sure could run like a rabbit. Of course, in such cases the reality of physics must eventually intrude and Biggun's weight crashed him to the concrete before he got very far. He struggled and thrashed like a turtle turned on its sh.e.l.l.

Tires shrieked. A pickup truck loaded with men roared into the gas station. I recognized among them Mr. Wilson and Mr. Callan. Most of the men held baseball bats, axes, or guns. Close behind them came a car, followed by another car. Then a second pickup truck skidded to a stop. The men of Zephyr-and many of the Bruton men, too-leaped out ready to bust some heads. "I'll be," Sheriff Amory said, and he stood up.

They were sorely disappointed, to say the least, that it was all over. I later learned the noise of the shootout had thawed their guts and brought them out to defend their sheriff and their town. They had all thought, I suppose, that someone else would shoulder the responsibility, that they could stay home and be safe. A lot of wives had done a lot of crying. But they had come. Not all of the Zephyr and Bruton men, by far, but more than enough to take care of business. I imagine that seeing the crowd of wild men with butcher knives, Louisville Sluggers, hatchets, pistols, and meat cleavers, the Blaylocks thanked their lucky stars they weren't going to jail in snuffboxes.

In all the confusion, I came out from hiding. Mr. Owen Cathcoate was standing over Wade, lecturing him about the straight and narrow path. Wade was listening with only half an ear. My dad was with the Moon Man, over by the Blaylocks' Caddy. I walked to him, and he looked at me and wanted to ask what I was doing there, but he didn't because the answer to that would lead to a whipping. So he didn't ask, he just nodded.

Dad and I stood together, staring down at Biggun's shotgun and the ammo bag. Green garden snakes wriggled around each other like a big ma.s.s of seaweed, overflowing from the bag.

The Moon Man just grinned. "My wife," he said. "She one craaaaazy old lady."

XXIV From the Lost World

THE BLAYLOCKS, IT MAY BE SAFE TO SAY, WENT DIRECTLY TO jail. They did not have a Get Out of Jail Free card, they did not collect two hundred dollars, and their mean monopoly was smashed. I understood that they were as tight-lipped as clams at first, but then the family ties began unraveling as the state investigators drilled them. Wade learned that Donny had stolen a large chunk of his moonshine profits, Bodean found that Wade was skimming the gambling den's money, and Donny suspected that Wade had put some a.r.s.enic in his bottle of moonshine and that's why he thought he'd seen a ghost. As the Blaylock brothers began spilling their guts, Biggun decided to take the high road. He fell on his knees at the arraignment and professed, sobbing to shame Shakespeare, that he was Born Again and had been duped into following the paths of Satan by his own misguided sons. They must take after their mothers, he said. He vowed to devote his life to being a minister, if, by the grace of the Lord above, the judge would offer him the cup of mercy.

He was told he would have a very long time in which to practice his preaching, and a nice secure place to catch up on his Bible reading.

When they dragged him out of court, kicking and screaming, he d.a.m.ned everybody in sight, even the stenographer. They said he threw so many curses that if those bad words had been bricks, they'd have made a three-bedroom house with a two-car garage. The brothers went before judges as well, to similar results. I didn't have any sympathy for them. If I knew the Blaylocks, they'd soon be running the prison store and making a killing off every cigarette and square of toilet paper.

One thing, though, the Blaylocks refused to divulge: what was in the wooden box they'd sold to Gerald Hargison and d.i.c.k Moultry. It couldn't be proven that any box even existed. But I knew better.

The Amorys left town. Mr. Marchette gave up being fire chief and stepped into the role of sheriff. I understand Sheriff Marchette told Mr. Owen Cathcoate anytime he wanted to wear a deputy's badge it would be fine with him. But Mr. Cathcoate informed the sheriff that the Candystick Kid had gone to roam the frontiers of the Wild West, where he belonged, and from here on out he was just plain old Owen.

Mom was in a zombie state for a while, as visions of what might have been careened through her mind, but she came out of it. I believe that deep in her heart she might have wanted Dad to stay safe at home but she respected him more for making up his own mind about what was right. When my lie became obvious, Dad debated not letting me go to the Brandywine Carnival when it came to town but he wound up making me wash and dry the dinner dishes for a week straight. I didn't argue. I had to pay the piper somehow.

Then the posters began appearing around town. BRANDYWINE CARNIVAL IS ON ITS WAY! Johnny was looking forward to seeing the Indian ponies and trick riders. Ben was excited about the midway, and the rides lit up with pulsing multicolored bulbs. I looked forward to the haunted house, which you rode through on rickety railcars while unseen things brushed your face and howled at you in the dark. Davy Ray's excitement concerned the freak show. I never saw anybody who got so worked up about freaks as he did. They gave me the creeps and I could hardly look at them, but Davy Ray was a true connoisseur of freakdom. If it had three arms, a pinhead, crocodile-scaled skin, or sweated blood, he went into giddy fits of delight.

So it happened that on Thursday night the park area near the baseball field where we'd had our Fourth of July barbecue was empty when the last Zephyr light went off. On Friday morning, kids on their way to school witnessed the transformation a few hours could bring. The Brandywine Carnival appeared like an island in a sea of sawdust. Trucks were chugging around, men were hoisting up tents, the frameworks of rides were being pieced together like dinosaur bones, and the booths were going up where food would be sold and Kewpie dolls not worth a quarter would be won for two dollars' worth of horseshoes.

Before school, my buddies and I took a spin around the park on our bikes. Other kids were doing the same thing, circling like moths in expectation of a light bulb. "There's the haunted house!" I said, pointing toward the bat wings of a gothic mansion being hinged together. Ben said, "Gonna be a Ferris wheel this year, looks like!" Johnny's gaze was on a trailer with horses and Indians painted on its side. Davy Ray hollered, "Looka there! Hoo boy!" We saw what he was so excited about: a big, garishly painted canvas with a wrinkled face at its center and in the center of the wrinkled face a single horrible eyeball. FREAKS OF NATURE! the words on the canvas said. IT COULD'VE BEEN YOU!

In truth, it was not a large carnival. It was short of medium-sized, too. Its tents were patched, its trailers rust-streaked, its trucks and workers equally tired. It was the end of the carnival season for them, and our area was almost its last stop. But we never thought that we were getting the leftover crop of caramel apples, that the Indian ponies and trick riders went through their routines with an eye on the clock, that the rides clattered in need of oiling and the barkers were surly not to add flavor but because they were d.a.m.ned bushed. We just saw a carnival out there, aglow and beckoning. That's what we saw.

"Looks like a good one this year!" Ben said as we started to turn back for school.

"Yeah, it sure-"

And then a horn blasted behind me and Rocket zoomed out of the way as a Mack truck pa.s.sed us. It turned onto the sawdust, its heavy tires crunching down. The truck was a hodgepodge of different-colored parts, and it was hauling a wide trailer with no windows. We could hear the suspension groan. On the trailer's sides, an amateurish hand had painted crude green jungle fronds and foliage. Across the jungle scene was scrawled, in thick red letters that had been allowed to drip like rivulets of blood: FROM THE LOST WORLD.

It rumbled away, toward the maze of other trucks and trailers. But in its wake I caught a smell. Not just exhaust, though of that there was plenty. Something else. Something... lizardy.

"Whew!" Davy Ray wrinkled his nose. "Ben let one!"

"I did not!"

"Silent but deadly!" Davy Ray whooped.

"You did it yourself, then! Not me!"

"I smell it," Johnny said calmly. Davy Ray and Ben shut up. We had learned to listen when Johnny spoke. "Came from that trailer," he said.

We watched the Mack truck and trailer turn between two tents and go out of sight. I looked at the ground, and saw the tires had smushed right through the sawdust and left brown grooves in the earth. "Wonder what's in it?" Davy Ray asked on the scent of a freak. I told him I didn't know, but whatever it was, it was mighty heavy.

On the ride to school, we formulated our plans. Parents permitting, we would meet at my house at six-thirty and go to the carnival together like the Four Musketeers. Does that suit everybody? I asked.

"Can't," Ben answered, pedaling beside me. He spoke the word like a grim bell tolling.

"Why not? We always go at six-thirty! That's when all the rides are goin'!"

"Can't," Ben repeated.

"Hey, you got a parrot stuck in your throat?" Davy Ray asked. "What's wrong with you?"

Ben sighed, blowing a wisp of steam in the morning's sunny chill. He had on a woolen cap, his round cheeks flushed with crimson. "Just... can't. Not until seven o'clock."

"We always go at six-thirty!" Davy Ray insisted. "It's... it's..." He looked at me for help.

"Tradition," I said.

"Yeah! That's what it is!"

"I think there's somethin' Ben doesn't want to tell us," Johnny said, swerving his bike up on the other side of Davy Ray. "Spit it out, Ben."

"It's just... I can't..." He frowned, and with another plume of steam decided to give up the game. "At six o'clock I've got a piana lesson."

"What?" Davy Ray had fairly yelled it. Rocket wobbled. Johnny looked as if he'd taken a Ca.s.sius Clay roundhouse punch to the noggin.

"A piana lesson," Ben repeated. The way he said that word, I could see legions of simpering pansies behind legions of upright pianos while their adoring mothers smiled and patted their beanies. "Miss Blue Gla.s.s has started teachin' piana. Mom's signed me up, and my first lesson's at six o'clock."

We were horrified. "Why, Ben?" I asked. "Why'd she do it?"

"She wants me to learn Christmas songs. Can you believe it? Christmas songs!"

"Man!" Davy Ray shook his head in commiseration. "Too bad Miss Blue Gla.s.s can't teach you guitar!" Git-tar, he p.r.o.nounced it. "Now, that'd be cool! But piana... yech!"

"Don't I know it," Ben muttered.

"Well, there's a way around this," Johnny said as we neared the school. "Why don't we just meet Ben at the Gla.s.ses' house? We can ride on to the carnival at seven instead of six-thirty."

"Yeah!" Ben perked up. "That way it won't be so awful!"

It was settled, then, pending parental okay. But every year we all got together and went to the carnival on Friday night from six-thirty until ten, and our parents had always said yes. It was really the only night kids our age could go. Sat.u.r.day morning and afternoon was when the black people went, and Sat.u.r.day night belonged to the older kids. Then by ten o'clock on Sunday morning the park area was clear again except for a few scatters of sawdust, crushed Dixie cups, and ticket stubs the cleanup crew had left like a dog marking its territory.

The day pa.s.sed in a slow crawl of antic.i.p.ation. Leatherlungs called me a blockhead twice and made Georgie Sanders stand with his nose pressed against a circle on the blackboard for smarting off. Ladd Devine went to the office for drawing a lewd picture on the inside cover of his notebook, and the Demon swore she'd fix Leatherlungs' wagon. I sure would've hated to be in Leatherlungs' clunky brown shoes.

From my house, as the blue twilight gathered and the sickle moon appeared, I could see the lights of the Brandywine Carnival. The Ferris wheel was turning, outlined in red. The midway sparkled with white bulbs. The sound of calliope music, laughter, and joyous screams drifted to me over the roofs of Zephyr. I had five dollars in my pocket, a gift from my father. I was wrapped up in my fleece-lined denim jacket against the cold. I was ready to roar.

The Gla.s.s sisters lived about a half mile away, on Shantuck Street. By the time I got there on Rocket, near quarter before seven, Davy Ray's bike was parked next to Ben's in front of the house, which looked like a gingerbread cottage Hansel and Gretel might've envied. I left Rocket and went up on the porch. I could hear piano notes being banged behind the door. Then the high, fluty voice of Miss Blue Gla.s.s: "Softly, Ben. Softly!"

I pressed the doorbell. Chimes rang, and Miss Blue Gla.s.s said, "Will you please answer that, Davy Ray?"

He opened the door as the banging continued. I could tell by his sick expression that listening to Ben try to hammer out the same five notes over and over again wasn't good for your health. "Is that Winifred Osborne?" Miss Blue Gla.s.s called over the racket.

"No ma'am, it's Cory Mackenson," Davy Ray told her. "He's waitin' for Ben, too."

"Bring him in, then. Too cold to wait outside."

I crossed the threshold into a living room that was a boy's nightmare. All the furniture looked like spindly antiques that wouldn't bear the weight of a starved mosquito. Little tables held porcelain figures of dancing clowns, children holding puppies, and the like. A gray carpet on the floor appeared to indelibly remember footprints. A gla.s.s curio cabinet as tall as my dad held a forest of colored crystal goblets, coffee mugs with the faces of all the presidents on them, twenty-odd ceramic dolls clothed in lace costumes, and maybe another twenty rhinestone-decorated eggs each with its own bra.s.s four-footed stand. What a crash that thing would make if it went over, I thought. A green-and-blue-streaked marble pedestal held an open Bible as big as my gargantuan dictionary, the type in it large enough to be read from across the room. Everything looked too frail to touch and too precious to enjoy, and I wondered how anybody could live in such a state of frozen pretty. Of course, there was the gleaming brown upright piano, with Ben trapped at its keys and Miss Blue Gla.s.s standing beside the bench holding a conductor's baton.

"h.e.l.lo, Cory. Please have a seat," she said. She was wearing all blue, as usual, except for a wide white belt around her bony waist. Her whitish-blond hair was piled up like a foamy fountain, her black gla.s.ses so thick they made her eyes bug.

"Where?" I asked her.

"Right there. On the sofa."

The sofa, covered in velvety cloth that showed shepherds playing their harps to prancing sheep, had legs that looked about as st.u.r.dy as rain-soaked twigs. Davy Ray and I eased down into the sofa's cushiony grip. The sofa creaked ever so slightly, but my heart jumped in my throat.

"Now! Thinkin' cap on! Fingers flow like the waves! One, two, three, one, two, three." Miss Blue Gla.s.s started motioning up and down with her baton as the pudgy fingers of Ben's right hand tried to play the same five notes with some resemblance to rhythm. Soon enough, though, he was pounding those notes as if trying to crush fire ants. "Flow like the waves!" Miss Blue Gla.s.s said. "Softly, softly! One, two, three, one, two, three!"

Ben's playing was less wavy and more sludgy. "I can't do it!" he wailed, and he pulled his hand away from those frightful keys. "My fingers are gettin' all crossed up!"

"Sonia, give that boy a rest!" Miss Green Gla.s.s called from the rear of the house. "You're gonna wear his fingers to the bone!" Her voice was more trombone than flute.

"You just mind your own beeswax now, Katharina!" Miss Blue Gla.s.s retorted. "Ben's got to learn the proper technique!"

"Well, it's his first lesson, for pity's sake!" Miss Green Gla.s.s walked out of a hallway into the living room. She put her hands on her skinny hips and glowered at her sister from behind her own black-framed gla.s.ses. She was wearing all green, the shades varying from pale to forest. She made you feel a little seasick just looking at her. Her blondish-white hair was piled higher than Sonia's, and had a vague pyramidal shape about it. "Not everybody's a musical genius like you, you know!"

"Yes I do know, thank you very much!" Swirls of red had crept into Miss Blue Gla.s.s's ivory cheeks. "I'll thank you not to interrupt Ben's lesson!"

"His time's about over, anyway. Who's your next victim?"

"Winifred Osborne is my next student," Miss Blue Gla.s.s said pointedly. "And if it wasn't for your magazine subscriptions, I wouldn't have to go back to teachin' piano to begin with!"

"Don't you blame my magazine subscriptions! It's your own self at fault! I swear, if you buy another set of dinner plates, I'm gonna go straight out of my head! What're you buyin' all those dinner plates for when we don't ever have anybody to dinner?"

"Because they're pretty, that's why! I like pretty things! And I could ask you why you went out and bought a collection of First Lady thimbles when you can't even sew a st.i.tch!"